Venice Biennale 2012: British Pavilion presents "Venice Takeaway"

Moscow, drawing by Gibb, 2012 / Anna Gibb - Courtesy of the British Council

Although the UK has not shortage of architectural talent,Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture responds to David Chipperfield’s ‘Common Ground’ theme for the 2012 Venice Biennale by seeking out imaginative responses to universal issues worldwide in an ambitious global research project. The British Council sent ten architectural teams around the world to research inspiring places and subjects that could generate discussion on what is great architecture while injecting new ideas into the UK. The Venice Takeaway exhibition charts the course of these teams and shares the ideas they discovered throughout Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Thailand and the USA. Continue after the break to learn more.

The British Council’s team led by Commissioner, Vicky Richardson, Director of Architecture, Design, Fashion, and Vanessa Norwood, Head of Exhibitions at the Architectural Association, with the advice of an expert panel, have chosen to showcase the ideas of: aberrant architecture, who travelled to Rio de Janeiro to investigate CIEPs, a radical education programme and a series of prefabricated primary schools designed by Oscar Niemeyer. Smout Allen and BLDGBLOG, whose research focused on the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles, an institution dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge about land use. Ross Anderson and Anna Gibb, who went to Moscow to investigate ‘Paper Architects’, a loose collective formed in the 1980s in response to state restrictions on their ability to build. Darryl Chen, who looked at parallels between the UK and China via a study of a pocket of informality, Caochangdi, a village on Beijing’s Fifth Road. dRMM who studied Ijberg, a floating community that has thrived under an advanced culture of planning, procurement and design, to the east of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. ! Forumfor Alternative Belfast who went to Berlin to investigate the International Bauausstellung 1987 (IBA 1987), an ambitious and visionary urban renewal project involving international architects. public works, Urban Projects Bureau and Owen Pritchard who formed a team to develop an ongoing discussion on the role and image of the architect through a new open charter. Elias Redstone who investigated Fideicomiso in Argentina, a legal trust which enables architects to fund their own projects. Liam Ross and Tolulope Onabolu, who travelled to Lagos to embark on a comparative study of risk and regulation and their impact on design. Takero Shimazaki /Toh Shimazaki Architecture whose investigation focuses on the work of Itsuko Hasegawa in several locations around Japan, and explores the way her architecture combines a belief in people with abstraction. The ideas of the ten architectural teams will be showcased in the British Pavilion in a specially designed environment created by graphic and environmental brand designers, Born Design. More information is available online here!